Florida Found

Our Florida experience started off with a canoe trip on the Chattahoochee River, across from Georgia. We did a turtle stake out and got the reward of getting onto turtle time but only young, small and inexperienced turtles fell for us being nearby to crawl back out on their sunning trees.
We also saw armadillo and this young alligator along with many alarmist birds. The armadillo was a focused fellow, rooting around noisily but the alligator was as still as a downed branch and the awareness of it came as a shock when we were just about to jump out of the canoe at the landing, a few feet away from his juvenile three foot longness.

It’s the salty taste on your lips that brings you home a moment after you dive and surface in the Gulf of Mexico. For us this happened at St. George Island on the Lost Coast of Florida. (Lost because it’s not economically very successful, lost because the rich aren’t taking advantage of their second homes, lost because people aren’t looking for it?)
We were driven to St. George Island by the need for a TV with the Packers-Dallas game. Nothing in Carrabelle, East Point or Apalachicola but St. George, despite it being karaoke night, had a place with the game on. We sort of bonded with that rowdy bit of neighborhood and stayed there two nights, tucked in off the street. We rode our bikes to the tip of the island on the beach, which was about four miles.

Now Michael is processing in the late afternoon light at the end of a deserted residential street in Indian Pass. No one is on the beach and Sasha and I have been out there wandering for shells or other treasure. As I sit here I can hear the drone of the juicer (and smell the sort of nutty heaviness of the oil) as well as tilt to avoid the sun in my eyes as the bright sky and sea are meeting just beyond about 50 feet of low illuminated dunes.
Today our community at home celebrates 20 years of being in partnership on our 12 acres of land. I honor that commitment to place and community and will be happy to be back in that familiar and loved place but it is heart achingly beautiful here and so many other places we have been. It’s amazing any of us are held in place at all. I always thought it was my love of the land but its really family and community that create the nexus of permanent staying.